I recommend not thinking too much about what things, in the end, are worth doing. Or maybe I do recommend it since you may find an answer (and not just a cheesy cliched one) and let me know about it. Nothing against cheesy cliched answers, but I’m so numb to cheesy cliches that the meaning never comes across. Better to paraphrase it in a new way so that you can get through my thick skull and actually transfer the desired information to me.

I got in a long talk with Jim a couple weeks ago about how everything we do can be reduced to peer pressure. Most of the time (probably all of the time) there are peer pressures telling you to do something while at the same time there are peer pressures telling you not to do something. Go to work. Don’t go to work. Write a book. Don’t write a book. Go to the gym. Don’t go to the gym. These opposing peer pressures create a system where it appears that we have a choice. Which of these peer pressures should I succumb to? It all goes back to how we handle decision-making, like it always does with me.

Most of the time, the peer pressure we end up succumbing to is because of a peer pressure on a meta-level… one level up from the current decision. Should I go to work or not go to work? Those are two fairly strong peer pressures… one to generate money, the other to play hookie and have fun with any of the friends who happen to have that particular day off. The meta pressure in this case is to be “responsible” or to be “spontaneous”. Be “responsible”. Be “spontaneous”. I quote those words because I think they’re Peer Pressure Propoganda… only there to make us think we achieve things by making certain decisions, by succumbing to certain pressures. “Erik, if you play hookie I’ll let you put this ‘spontaneous’ sticker on your forehead for a day. Then you have to give it back… don’t worry, I’ll give you other chances for stickers.”

My 5 year plan is trying to kill me. Every plan is just an attempt to gain something locally. Globally, nothing changes. Cause in the end… you know...

One point that Jim brought up, and which is so obvious that I had forgotten to consider it, is that it is almost always worth it to help someone. Or at least, that’s the assumption. If someone is dying on the sidewalk and all they need to get better is a glass of water, and you’re holding a glass of water, is there any way to argue that it’s not worth giving them that glass? I could therefore exhaust my entire life by moving to a location where everybody suffered, and spend my life helping to lift those people out of that suffering. Of course, it has that feeling of trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon…

Nevertheless, that argument forced me to stop feeling sorry for myself, at least until yesterday. What if that person on the sidewalk was dying and they thought that all they would need to live was a glass of water. Would it still be so clearly a good decision to give them that glass of water? The glass of water is worthless, in the real scheme of things, they just think they need it. This, I realized, is how I justify not giving change to every person that asks for it, how I justify not letting a homeless person sleep on my couch every night. The things they want, I’m not entirely sure that they will actually help them, and in the meantime it costs me to try to help them. Nobody wants to waste time and energy. Extremely selfish of me, I know, but you’re the same way so don’t criticize.

So, I ask you. In the end, what is the difference between helping someone and simply giving them what they want? The difference, I think, is that in the former we think we know how to help them. It’s like there’s a guy dying on the sidewalk and instead of them thinking that the glass of water will save their life, we think our glass of water will save their life. So we subject them to whatever scheme we are convinced of to try to make them think what we think… even if they don’t want the glass of water initially. Sometimes both the dying guy and the giver believe in the glass of water and I think that’s what is the most difficult scenario to be skeptical of, but it is entirely possible that both people are mistaken.

Yeah, I know. I could justify my own selfishness all the way to the moon and it wouldn’t matter. What matters, in the end is a thing that would be worth doing even if nobody suffered. Because I feel like we’re avoiding that question. If the point of our lives is to distribute health (“Ultimate health is already here… it’s just not equally distributed yet”), what will the point of our lives be when everyone is healthy?

Being entertained?

Creating games, stories, and other systems of competition so that we can relive situations of conflict and resolution like there used to be?

Consuming?

Staying busy? Killing time? Waiting to die?

What is the difference between helping someone and giving them what they want? What is the difference between being alive and being dead? Anyone that hasn’t experience extremely suicidal thoughts, I think, hasn’t lived.

It is a valid move in any game to leave the game. It is also the most boring move. There is incredible peer pressure to stay in the game. Just try leaving a game, any game, for no reason. People will literally attack you. There needs to be a stronger meta-level pressure to make you want to leave the game. I know it: indifference. Indifference is the state of no longer allowing peer pressure to effect you.

Someone show me a kind of peer pressure that has any power against indifference. Assume that I am indifferent both to myself and the group… all groups. How do you move something that doesn’t respond to pressure?